LOL - well, continuing on the 'medical emergency' subject. Mattie at AT&T Milwaukee HQ called me today as a followup. I mentioned the reprioritization issue and people using phony medical excuses. She said they now require the customer fax in a doctor's statement as backup. Now, how carefully they follow that protocol, etc., we don't know. I expect plenty of times it is ignored.
Fwiw, their policy is to issue a credit of $35 if a customer is without service more than 72 hours. Actually, my service was out 144 hours, but she didn't offer $70. I didn't argue. Just glad my phone is working.
I did tell her it's unfortunate the higherups won't hire more people and, instead, lay all the grief on the downline people - CS reps who know AT&T can't service their accounts properly right now, dispatchers who assign three calls to a tech in a day when they know the tech can only complete two of them. In my case, the guy was at my house the entire afternoon as he had to reconnoiter the neighborhood to ascertain the drop and test that line first before dealing with the line in my backyard. And, if they do bring new people on, there is the training curve and all the variables. I had a very experienced lineman.
She said it has been a particularly bad summer for Wisconsin and Indiana. They've had a lot of complaints. All they can do is pass them along up the line. I told her customer experiences like mine did not serve them well, because I was considering AT&T UVerse - my sister and another friend have it - but after this experience, never.